Cornelius Houghland, the last son still at home, had married Anna Stalcop in March, and they went ahead with 35 head of cattle. Anna rode a three-year-old thoroughbred filly andcarried the camp equipment for cooking on the way. RecountsSamantha Beuhring Young in a letter, "A two gallon demijohnwould be filled with milk and the jostling on the horse's backwould churn it and this supplied them with butter." Corneliuswith his trusty rifle drove the cattle and kept the herd withAnnie and the horse. They followed a trail through Clarksburg toWilliamstown and Parkersburg, WV on the Ohio River.

Meanwhile, John Houghland and the rest of the family started forthe Mononghela River where they would journey by boat toPittsburgh and then along the Ohio River to Williamstown. Therethey were to meet Cornelius and Anna with the cattle. Travelingwith John were his wife, his daughter and son-in- law Tom McGuireand their two children, his youngest son John, and somedaughters. At Pittsburgh some of the family became sick, whichdetained them several days. By November, winter set in and iceclosed the river until the first of April.

While John Houghland was stuck in Pennsylvania, Cornelius andAnna had already arrived safely at Williamstown. When theirfamily didn't come in time, Cornelius chose to move seven milesfrom the river to a place that has been known as Houghland's Runever since. There he built a camp where he and Anna, the filly,and 35 head of cattle spent the winter. By feeding the cattle onpea vines which grew abundantly in that virgin forest, and oncorn he packed on the filly from Blennerhasset Island, Corneliusgot the herd all safely through the winter.

When the family came down the Ohio River in the spring, theydecided not to go on to Kentucky but to settle on 1,400 acres inWood County, WV. The daughter of Cornelius and Anna, PollyHoughland, was born near Williamstown, WV on June 23, 1797. WhenJohn Houghland died, he was buried at Williamstown. After hisdeath his widow went back to the south branch of the Potomacwith her son John and one daughter, where she married an oldfriend and neighbor.

In the spring of 1801, Cornelius Houghland, Anna Stalcop, theirtwo daughters Polly and Margaret, and Thomas McGuire and familytraded their land in Wood County for 6,000 acres across the OhioRiver at Barlow, Washington County, Ohio. At first they builtcabins. Later Cornelius opened up the first tavern on the roadfrom Marietta and Athens and on to Chillicothe. He was electedthe first justice of the peace, a position he filled the rest ofhis life. Though he had slaves, educated and mostly Methodist,he set them free long before the Civil War. In the spring of1818, a tree fell on Cornelius while he was building the firstbrick house in Barlow. He lived only 24 hours more. After hisdeath, his personal property was appraised at $8,488 -- aconsiderable sum for that day. Anna continued building the housebut not as large as Cornelius had contemplated. One hundredyears later, in 1926, the house was still standing.

Pleasant Places: A Family History

Illustrated family histories of the ancestors of Michael DavidMcGinnis, from Ireland, Germany, Bohemia, England,Massachusetts, West Virginia, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas,including Edmund McGinnis, Polly Houghland, Christopher O'Bryan,Thomas Berwick, Robert Perry, Rebecca Nurse, Hiram LangdonNourse, Christoph Ashorn, Carl Findeisen, and James Harvey Kidd.http://biographiks.com/pleasant/pleasant.htm